HEBRON, Saturday, July 23, 2022 (WAFA) – Scores of Palestinians were injured today, including local officials, as Israeli occupation forces attacked a nonviolent sit-in protest against Israeli settlement construction to the south of al-Dhahiriya town, in the southern West Bank province of Hebron, according to local sources.

Witnesses told WAFA that Israeli occupation soldiers fired teargas canisters and stun grenades at the protesters, injuring the deputy mayor of the town, Nayef Makharza, with a stun canister in his foot and causing many cases of suffocation from gas inhalation.

The town’s mayor, Bahjat Jabarin, was also arrested, added the sources.

The protesters were demonstrating against Israel’s imminent plan to take over large swathes of private Palestinian land near the town for the benefit of the colonial Israeli settlement enterprise.

During the attack, an armed Israeli settler opened gunfire at the participants in the protest in the presence of the soldiers. No one was hurt, witnesses added.

There are over 650,000 Israeli settlers living in illegal colonial settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem in violation of international law.

M.N./M.K.